Survey Analysis

Nocturnal Puerto Viejo High School
Survey Results

The survey was done in the Nocturnal Puerto Viejo High School to know the knowledge and use of technology the teachers have there.
To set you in the place it is necessary to mention a little bit about the background and Students situations according to the research the economical situation of the Students and the community in general is not good nor bad but most of the students work during the day to study at night so they must be “responsible”, however some of them are living and sent there by their parents which pay every thing but the family characteristics are not unknown for the teachers.

Talking about drug addiction in the high school, there can be seen people smoking in some places and also some romantic scenes in others. According to some other Students, some of the learners go to different places around the school to smoke and do different things. That is because the high school population is very big, there are a lot o Students and most of them are over 18 years old.

The knowledge of English Teachers about innovative technologies is good, they know about different strategies and they like to innovate, however they do not have a lot of technology or equipment to use in the institution.
Educators like to use TV to watch movies and documental and if they have the opportunity they bring a CD player although the resources there are not enough.
Also, when they are given a class they try to include some community problems to help student be interested on the topic.

The assignments assigned have some objectives which are inclined to use technology and research about different topics, so Students have to go to different internet sites to look for results.
Teachers always tries to include creative activities but always thinking about the differences among students and when they find something difficult they try to look for new strategies and innovative activities using what they have available. Teachers say that they try to implement other subjects into their lessons but some times it become difficult; moreover, they look for resources in internet to solve that difficulties but they also use books.

In addition to motivate Students, teachers try to bring active activities and movies but in some occasions and with some Students it does not work because of Students attitude which tend to be lazy and irresponsible.

In Conclusion, the nocturnal high school difficulties are always present as in any other high school, and the need for technology and equipment too, however as we can see neither the students attitude nor the lack of equipment can stop Students learning process and what is necessary is to try to use our resources as much as we can do it.
May be, we have the opportunity to work in a beautiful institution with every technology available, but remember that things can change and we have to be aware of all that.

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Sede Guápiles
LIN-06 Innovaciones Educativas
Survey about Educative Innovations
Guadalupe Bustos Bonilla
Record: This is an interview to the English staff of a specific high school in order to know the use of innovations in the institution and how can it motivate the students.

1. How is your Students economical situation?
2. How are the families composed in your community?
3. Is the community affected by drug addiction?
4. What do you know about innovative technologies?
5. Do you use technology to innovate in your lessons? Why?
6. When you teach, do you try to solve local and community problems?
7. Do your Students analyze different current problems?
8. Have you asked your students about what they want to learn?
9. Do you assign homework where your students have to use internet?
10. Do you promote your students creativity during the learning process?
11. Do you take into account the individual differences when using a new strategy?
12. Do you use to talk in the classroom about topics related to the national and worldwide situation?
13. Have you tried to implement other subjects’ topics in your English class? Such as science, social studies or mathematics?
14. Do you use computers in some of your lessons? How?
15. Do you look for authentic or created materials in the internet to prepare your lessons?
16. What do you use to motivate your Students in the classroom?
17. Are the students motivated when you use innovative technologies in the classroom?
18. Which innovative approaches do you use and which are the purposes to use them?
19. Which innovative approaches do you know?

Plan Demo AnalysisVOCABULARY MONEY. Group 3

In general, the planning has been developed in different stages, in which the targets of a specified subject can vary from one to another. As a matter of fact, the objective may depend on teacher's purposes when exposing and developing this planning. In addition, the student's interest can also vary, depending on how the activities and instructions are going to be presented in classroom, some of these facts can be: the teacher's mood and disposition to explain and perform the planning rules, the materials provided must be ordered, and presented in a way that call student's interests and what the curriculum is about. This planning method, in particular, has its weaknesses and strengths. Some of the advantages that can be mentioned are the procedures that are ordered chronologically, the instructions are clear at the time of exposing them, as well as encouraging student's participation and interaction with the rest of classmates, without forgetting the student's personal point of view related to different activities about vocabulary money (that is the specific topic that is being developed). This planning structure also promotes students interaction with the new learned vocabulary, where they will use directly during the activities provided. Different texts will provide them to infer information, using background of what they know or think about (in this case, one of the objectives are the predicting idea what the presented article, text or story is), by using pictures or even flashcards. The Teacher's role observed in this plan is very dynamic and appropriate because the Teacher is the guide in the process and participates in some activities but he/she is never doing everything and Students are acting and resolving many situations presented during the lesson, such as completion exercises, identification of vocabulary and so on. Besides that, Students are asked to construct their own knowledge while they are developing the activities and Teacher provides extra vocabulary and cultural aspects when she/he give them different idioms related to money and their corresponding meaning, so Students are learning about a different cultural language they use in USA and what is the correct connotation it has. Moreover, it is easy to give feedback to the Students at the end of the whole activity it can be taking into account the pronunciation or the grammar they used during the answer to the questions. Also, as money is a controversial and cultural topic Students have the opportunity to give opinions about it and express their own values and believes by answering the questions provided at the end of the activity. It can be a competitive activity if we work in groups and as teams because every Student will want to be the winner and using that as motivation they will learn and perform the situations in a better way. There is no limitation for Students to participate and improve their knowledge; they can do it by themselves and also learning from their classmates and teacher. Some of the personality factors presented in this planning regarding to students language acquisition are self- esteem, risk taking, and motivation. The first one self- esteem is stimulated on the activities where students offer their opinions, points of view and predictions about the pictures of the first sheet of paper. Second, risk taking is going to be presented on students at the time they are asked to guess the meaning of the idioms through the men' s pictures, and motivation should be product of the team work that the planning emphasizes and the way that teacher complement the procedures through his or her attitudes in the class. Regarding to team work, it is presented in almost all the planning, probably as a way to reinforce knowledge among students, and as a way to facilitate social interaction and collaboration. In fact, it must be taken into account the context of this planning, which is European- centered developed. Using euros instead of colones. However, the planning has the advantage of being adjustable to Costa Rican context. On the other hand, some of the disadvantages that this planning can reflect are the lack of clear meanings about the vocabulary provided. In fact, there is an emphasis of giving vocabulary no matter the meaning of words (mostly verbs, in this case). The differences of context may be a drawback for students, which are not always (or never, indeed) directly related to the exposed situations. In short, this planning method is an important general tool to take in practice for developing in classes. But mostly take it as an adaptable and remaking issue that we as teachers can use in order to innovate and offer for constructing an interest on learner's purposes. Making classes focused on student's personal decisions and points of view, reinforcing also the differences among contexts related to English speaking countries and Costa Rica's culture.


Made by Guadalupe Bustos.Kattia Vargas.Yendri Espinoza.

English is seen as one of the most important languages around the World ; for that reason it is been necessary to speak English as a tool to get a good job. However here in Costa Rica we have some problems when talking about English teaching and learning because Students find many difficulties to learn the target language, also some people tend to spend years attending to public institutions without getting the required language proficiency. Because of that, society use to blame the educational system and English teachers for applying poor techniques to teach the language. Besides that, in some ocassions English is taught under unfavorable conditions and teachers face the lack of materials and motivation. On the other hand, there are teachers which are looking for solutions and they have found some alternatives to solve the difficulties; among those alternatives there are the use of technology and innovative activities in the classroom. Now the matter is, how can teachers implement this alternative in the classroom without problems?

Obviously, to promote the change from the traditional classroom to the technology as an important component in the class we are going to find many difficulties due to the cultural differences and need to get accustom to it, as well as other Spanish speaker countries which have to deal with the same inconvenient; the first factor that contributes to this problem is the environment in which we teach because most of the time we do not have the opportunity to speak to a native speaker person or to facilitate this interaction to our students, also the classrooms are full of students and we do not have the opportunity to assist each one individually; consequently the resources are not enough and the process becomes difficult to overcome. But, there is no problem and the solutions can be found.

Despite this situation, in some other countries people have been looking for solutions to this circumstance and, they have found some alternatives which can help us as an example to follow in our educational system; according to Carlos A. Mayora a recognized teacher from Caracas Venezuela he talks about a Technological Enhanced Language Learning (TELL) program, that is implemented in a high school in Venezuela and, the results they get are very satisfactory and profitable. What the program does is to join multimedia technology with traditional classroom English instruction, “ the program`s main objective is to develop the Ss´mastery of reading , listening , writing and speaking skills as well as the subskills of vocabulary and grammar” Pino-Silva and Antonini(1999, cited by Mayora 2006) this objective is achieved by different tasks assigned to the Students and developed in a multimedia environment that is composed by some computer and video stations, the students work individually and by themselves while the results are analyze by teachers at the end of each session to give them feedback and encourage them to improve. This is an example of how to get Students motivated in a task or in learning a new language also, it is interesting to be applied in our educational system.

It is seen that the education can be improved to guide the learning process to a positive transformation. Sometimes, one of the excuses for not to use technology is because the government does not give teachers or institutions the necessary budget to buy every computer or appliance needed; however, as teachers we have the responsability to look for the solution as much as we can, and one option here is to use what we have at home or at the institution, for example we can use radio to listen to local news which are in English; besides that, the high school´s TV or DVD can help us to watch a video about a real life situation where native speakers are talking. In addittion, Students can bring their own materials, nowadays we have many people who have cellphones in our classroom, so they can use those phones to educational purposes while recording a video of themselves speaking in English and using a specific topic. Technology and innovation are close to us we just need to pay attention to them.

We can see that English Teaching becomes difficult sometimes, because the results we got are not so positive and Teachers are unmotivated by that, but it is necessary to take into account that in some ocassions it is not just our fault and, that Students motivation and lack of interest in the subject can also affect our development as instructors. However, as teachers we must look for solutions and other activites which promote Students´ creativity and imagination involving real-life situations and their interests.
Another option, we have is to get together and share our experiences with other teachers, in order to look for the solutions and give to the students what they deserve. Technology is not threatening us or our job; since we are necessary in the classroom, on the other hand it is offering teachers the opportunity to progress and to get better in this variable world.

Mayora,C.2006.Integrating Multimedia Technology in a High School EFL Program.In English Teaching Forum.44(3).Review Board. Washington DC.

Students’ motivation in the classroom

Every day when a teacher arrives to a classroom she/he has a specific objective to reach and, it depends a lot on students and teachers´ attitudes and motivation that is, because the way students learn a language is not just about the Teachers´ attitude but also about the students´ attitude towards it, sometimes Ss need to be push up to start the process of learning a new language such as English, because they can feel afraid or shy when they have to perform the new language in front of many new people; for that reason teachers have the duty to help Students to feel comfortable in the classroom and to build confidence on them. Thus, the solution to the problem is given but How can teachers incentive this motivation to learn?

The first and most important aspect in the English teaching process is the motivation that Students receive from the Teachers and the community in some occasions, this motivation has to do with the attitudes which can be positive or negative toward the language; according to Ellis( 1994, cited by Elyildirim and Ashton 2006) ¨Students ability to learn a second language can be influenced by their attitudes towards the target language¨, it means that Students need to have a positive thinking of the second language and the foreign culture too. Consequently, the Teacher´s objective is, to increase Students motivation on the language learning; as a result, to reach this goal the Teacher can use different language teaching strategies such as the use of pictures, songs, movies, internet and other innovative technologies which can help him/her to motivate and encourage students to acquire the language thanks to the use of real life situation and actual technologies. Besides that, there is another important thing that has to be taken into account when motivating students and it is the environment in which they are going to learn.

The environment in which Students are learning, is important because it helps Students to feel secure and take risks if it is necessary; in addition, a good environment can be provided by the teacher and classmates showing respect to each other and by the Teacher when she/he corrects the mistakes at the appropriate moment; according to some studies like Yashima( 2002, cited by Elyildirim and Ashton 2006)find that motivated Students have greater self confidence in their second language , resulting in a greater willingness to communicate . That means, that the Students proficiency depends on the motivation they receive during the language learning process, and this motivation can be provided not just by the Teacher but for the other Students too, while they are sharing in the classroom atmosphere.

As a conclusion, teachers are very important encouraging Students to learn because they know students abilities, weaknesses and strengthens and some of them have the opportunity to know their feelings. For that reason, to be a teacher can be classified as a multifunctional profession where people can be psychologists, friends and doctors to be able to motivate the pupils and push them up to continue being successful in life. And remember that a single teacher can change many students life.

Elyildirim, S., and Ashton, S.2006.Creating Positive Attitudes Towards English as a Foreign Language. In English Teaching Forum.44 (4).Review Board. Washington DC